The Power of Purrsuasion
by blackkittycat89
Summary: Steve hides a stray cat in the house. Angie helps him keep it a secret from an allergic Peggy.


"Hey, Painter Boy, what are you up to?"

Steve hadn't heard Angie come in. He was sitting on the kitchen floor, almost completely hidden by the large fridge Howard had bought for the townhouse when Steve had moved in with the girls. He quickly got up to greet her.

"Hiya, Angie. Not really doing anything. What are you doing home? Didn't you say this morning you were filling in for Denice this afternoon?"

"She decided to show up after all. But it works out great actually, because before I left for the diner this morning, I got a phone call from this production I auditioned for last week. They wanna see me again," Angie said, walking over to the cupboard to grab a glass, "and they wanna see me tonight, so now I can actually prepare for it instead of having to rush over there after my shift in my uniform."

She came over to grab the jug of orange juice, staring at Steve, whose entire left side was pressed up against the fridge. She filled her glass, put the orange juice back in the fridge and took a sip. Putting her glass down on the counter, she tilted her head. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"Either something horrific happened to your backside during your morning run, or you're hiding something from me. And given that you're Mister Super Human, I'm guessing it's the latter. Come on, out with it."

Steve sighed and turned around to pick something up. When he was facing Angie again, she could see a little grey ball in his arms.

"I found this little guy in the park this morning. I just couldn't leave him behind."

Angie came closer and saw that the little ball in Steve's arms was actually a small cat. "He's adorable!"

"I know! I took him to that veterinarian the S.S.R. uses, and he's completely healthy, he just needed some food and some care," Steve said.

The cat began to purr when Angie stroked him. "Such a sweetheart! Who's going to take him in?"

"Well, I thought we could keep him."

"Oh, that such a good idea." Angie was silent for a few seconds, and then stopped petting the cat. "We can't keep him! Peggy's allergic to cats!"

Steve was confused. "Since when? And how do you know that?"

Angie took the little cat out of Steve's arms and put him down on the floor so he could walk around the kitchen for a little bit. She took her glass of orange juice, put it down on the kitchen table, and sat down. Steve followed.

"This happened before you." Angie flailed her hand about. "You know."

"Before they got me out of the ice and defrosted me like a cheap piece of steak?"

Angie slapped Steve on the arm. "Hey, you're not a cheap steak. You are too delicious. I would say you were more like a nice filet mignon, mister."

"I think you mean 'captain', Angie." That earned him another slap, but they both laughed.

She cleared her throat. "Anyways, before you came back, Peggy and I were living at the Griffith Hotel. Our landlady had a lot of rules, one of which was absolutely no pets of any kind. Of course most of us didn't always follow the rules, but that was generally just about the whole 'no food in the room' thing."

Angie took a sip of her juice. "This one time though, this girl from Georgia, I don't even remember her name. She moved in a few days after Peggy did. Well, she smuggled in her cat. Kept the poor thing locked up in her room, feeding it scraps of food she could sneak out of the dining room. We never figured out how it happened, but somehow Miss Georgia's cat escaped and ended up in Peggy's room."

Steve was so fascinated by Angie's story-telling that he hardly noticed the cat nestling against his feet. "What happened?"

"Well, English came home from her job at the 'phone company' and went into her room. Five seconds later, she's knocking on my door, telling me there's a cat in her room. A few of the other girls had heard something in the hallway, so they came out to see what was going on, and suddenly the cat sprinted out of Peggy's room straight into another room. The girls chased that thing around for an hour before Miss Georgia finally showed up. By that time though, Mrs. Fry had found out about it, so she and her cat left the next day."

"So how did you find out that Peggy was allergic?"

Angie laughed. "I don't think she even realised how bad it looked, but later that night she came knocking on my door again: eyes all red, stuffed nose, raspy throat. The cat must've been in her room for quite a while, I guess. I let her stay in my room for the night, and the next day I helped her clean her room. The cat had found a way inside Peggy's closet, so we even had to wash all of her clothes."

Both of them smiled. Angie loved telling Steve stories about her time at the Griffith, and Steve loved hearing them, though they were both happy living together with Peggy at Howard's townhouse. Steve finally noticed the cat, who had been begging for attention for a while now. He ducked down to sweep him up in his arms.

"So I guess we'll have to find this little guy another home, right?"

Angie saw the hint of sadness in Steve's eyes. She knew he still had days where he struggled with all that had happened during the war and the time he lost when he was stuck in the ice, especially when he spent all day home alone with nothing but his drawings and paintings to keep him company. A pet did seem like a good solution to a problem none of them had acknowledged up to now.

"Maybe we can find a way to keep him anyway? At the Griffith, Peggy didn't start sneezing and coughing until the cat had been in her room. If we keep him in a room she doesn't use, there's no reason why she would ever find out about him."

"Just to be absolutely sure that this is what you're saying: you are proposing that we lie about the presence of a cat in this house to Peggy, a trained intelligence officer with a cat allergy?" Steve asked incredulously.

Angie waved him off. "Trained intelligence officer, sure, but she sometimes fails to notice the most obvious things around her. Remember how long it took for her to realise that both of us liked each other too?"

"I wasn't exactly upfront about my feelings. If I had been, she would've figured it out a lot sooner."

"You and your appalling gentleman ways," Angie teased.

Steve leaned over and kissed her, and Angie happily returned the favour. He broke the kiss and got up, still carrying the cat. He kissed her forehead and walked out of the kitchen, talking to the cat about his art studio on the top floor.

"Wait for me," Angie said. She got up and ran up the stairs after them. "What should we name the little fella?"

* * *

Peggy ran upstairs for the fifth time that day, gun in hand, ready to defend herself against whoever had decided to attack her in her own home. For the fifth time that day, she realised the noise she had heard must have been a creak in a floorboard, because aside from herself the house was empty. Angie was at another Saturday rehearsal for her play and Howard had taken Steve to meet with some investors who needed some sweet-talking before they would sign on to Stark Industries's next big project.

After making sure there were no intruders in the house, Peggy went back downstairs and got back to work. Angie and Steve would both be home in an hour and she wanted to be done with work by then. Chief Sousa had demanded the paperwork from her latest case be on his desk by Monday, and Peggy still had two months of surveillance and interview notes to get through. She was just about to type another witness report when she sneezed. Attributing it to the dust in her office, she went back to her report. Until she sneezed again. And again.

She decided to take a break and get a glass of water in the kitchen, since her throat had begun to ache a while ago. She was just about to cross the hallway when something ran past her feet and up the stairs. Forgetting all about her glass of water, Peggy ran after the mysterious grey streak. She searched every room methodically, still sneezing every now and again. She thought she had found something in their bedroom, but it turned out to be one of her slippers which was covered by one of Steve's old shirts Angie or she had been using as a nightgown. Peggy was just about to go up to the third floor when she heard the front door open and close.

"Angie, is that you?" she yelled down.

"No, it's me."

She heard Steve come up the stairs to the second floor, so she waited for him. Searching the house would be a lot easier with another set of eyes and ears. She greeted him with a tender kiss on the lips.

"Hello, darling. How was it?"

Steve shrugged. "Stark's investors wanted me to be Captain America, so I was. I think eventually Stark realised I wasn't having fun, because he told me to, and I'm quoting here, 'Go home to my ladies and fondue.' He is never going to let me forget about that, is he?"

"I don't think he will," Peggy laughed.

They stood in silence for a few moments until Steve started to look around. "So, what are we doing here?"

"Oh! I nearly forgot about it. I was out in the hallway downstairs when something ran by me and up the stairs. I came up here to find out what it was, but I think it might be up in your studio." Peggy pointed up the stairs. "Do you want to come help me look?" she asked before sneezing again.

Steve scratched behind his ear. "I don't know, Peggy. Are you sure you saw something?"

"I have a cold, I'm not hallucinating. I saw something grey run up the stairs. If you don't want to help me look, you could just tell me," she finished, hands on her hips.

He sighed. "I'll help." He paused. "You know what, whatever it was may have run back down the stairs while you were in one of the rooms. Why don't you go look downstairs and I'll look around in my studio?"

"Okay," Peggy said, eyes narrowing. "Just shout when you have found it."

Steve waited until she had gone down the stairs before he ran to the third floor. The door to his studio was wide open. He walked in and closed the door behind him immediately. He looked behind some of his canvases and underneath the old chaise longue. He had just laid down on the floor to look underneath the shelving unit that housed his paints and brushes when he felt soft paws touch the back of his thigh. He rolled over, surprising the grey cat. He sat up and with a quick move of his hand, he picked up the cat, cradling him in his lap.

"Bad Flapjacks. You know you're not supposed to go into the rest of the house," Steve told the cat. "Although maybe I shouldn't have left the door open. So I guess we were both at fault here." He held the cat up to his face and looked him in the eye. "If you forgive me, I'll forgive you."

Steve didn't really expect the cat to answer him, but when Flapjacks booped him on the nose with one of his paws, he took it as an apology. He hugged the cat closer, hoping to delay the inevitable moment when he had to come clean to Peggy and say goodbye to his new friend. He heard the first flight of stairs creak, so he knew she was on her way up. He put Flapjacks down and made sure all of his paintings were covered. He was not yet ready to show either Peggy or Angie what he had been working on. He opened a window, hoping it would help Peggy's allergy. Outside the door to his studio, Peggy sneezed. He didn't wait for her to knock. He opened the door. He was surprised to find Angie standing behind Peggy.

"I have to tell you something," he blurted out when the two of them walked in.

"Could it have something to do with the cat sitting in the middle of your studio?" Peggy asked.

She didn't sound upset, but Steve was not going to take any risks. "I'm sorry. Angie told me you were allergic, but I couldn't get rid of Flapjacks. I found him in the park during my run one morning, crying out. He was so hungry! And he was literally shivering from the cold. I took him to get checked out, and he was okay, so I brought him here and then Angie came home. She told me about what had happened with that cat at the Griffith, but we figured it wouldn't hurt if we just kept Flapjacks in my studio."

Peggy looked at Angie. "So you knew about this?"

"Oh, come on. Flapjacks is so adorable! You can't expect us to just put him out again into the cold, cold New York winter, can you?" Angie pouted, batting her eyes at Peggy.

Peggy sighed in defeat, suppressing another sneeze. "I guess Howard can invent me some extra-strong antihistamine."

"So, we can keep him?" Steve said, looking hopeful.

When Peggy nodded, he grabbed her and spun her around, kissing her. After he had put her back down, he did the same to Angie for good measure. The women exchanged a soft kiss on the lips and linked arms, staring at Steve who was still thanking them.

"Come on," Peggy interrupted, dragging Angie along with her. "It's time you two officially introduce me to Flapjacks."


End file.
